Cal State Long Beach will give its art students extra credit if they got to the Brewery Artwalk this weekend and take a picture of themselves with an artist.

What the fuck ever happened to writing a report?

Schools have become tinkertot summer camp babysitting service. Wonder if Chris Miles teaches fingerpainting classes at Long Beach (he is the only CSULB teacher I know so he gets the sling and arrow and is probably not responsible for sending kids to a place where if they are hot chicks, art dudes are going to offer them pot - I didn’t give your daughters extra credit to smoke dope with artists who cannot get solo shows and get knocked up by party guys whose parents pay their loft rent)…

Jay De Feo's JEWEL is at LACMA

I trashed the new Eli Broad strokejob at LACMA pretty hard a few months back but tonight I went to LACMA and looked at everything else and you know what? It is a pretty awesome encyclopedic art collection and most of it is something about which anyone in the L.A. art world can be proud. Proud enough to not use a preposition at the end of a sentence discussing said pride.

> Entrants on the Power 100 list are judged on the following four criteria, each of which carries a 25 percent weighting.

Painter Brian Tydings sent me a list from one of those desperate -for-attention art magazines on how they calculate one of those bullshit “Art World Power 100″ lists that are always a combo of stroking and sucking up. So I gave my responses after each one of their ridiculous “assessments”…

> 1. Genuine influence over the production of art: entrants must exert influence over the type, style and shape of contemporary art being produced in the previous 12 months.
1. how much of a heartless bastard in the name of your own egomania can you be?

> 2. Influence on an international scale: as the list is international, entrants must exert influence on a global scale rather than as big fish in small-to-medium ponds.
2. let’s keep pretending shit-holes like Lower Slobovia are the equal of the united States or we “euro/cosmo-asia” types will be rendered inconsequential.

> 3. Financial clout: entrants are judged on the extent to which they have shaped, moulded or dominated the art market, whether as artists, dealers or collectors.
3. How many slum hotels, sweatshops and investement pyramid schemes do your mom and dad send money to your trust fund from?

> 4. Activity within the last 12 months: entrants are judged on having actually done something during the period September 2007 to August 2008. It’s not enough to sit on your powerful behind.
4. Did you buy an ad in our rag?

Carol Es at her opening “SHE DREAMED SHE REMEMBERED” in Culver City

We went to ton of art shows and openings all over town. Best, most crowded opening was for Carol Es in Culver City - great painting of finding the perfection of our neurotic self in an imperfect world. The work is fun and serious, well painted and composed but not so mature that you brood. Plus she is one of the few artists who’s art has sold in the galleries this past few weeks, what with the stock market crash pretty much decimating the L.A. art world - they talk about it openly… Every gallery owner knows his burn rate - how much money will he flush away on rent without sales until he or she is forced to close. It was a day with very few red dots.

“A dreaded sunny, so let’s go where we’re happy, I will meet you at the cemet’ry gates…”

I juried a show with three other art world powerbrokers for the Laguna College of Art and Design. The drive down to Laguna was a breeze - so few cars on the road - I guess a recession has its upsides.

So the college is all figurative art, rigorous, realistic, definitely a conservative tilt for me to be involved with but the show itself is just so bizarre as a concept that I had to be involved - the artworks will be show in in a giant, walk-in and walk-around marble crypt at a cemetery and lit by candlelight. Seriously, this is something i want to see live.

The other jurors were Richard MacDonald, Jr. of Dawson Cole Fine Arts, Joshua Rose, the editor of American Art Collector and Peter Frank (does he even need an introduction or litany of prestigious titles and associations?)

We picked three artists to win the top cash prizes - the top one was voted the highest by all 4 of us, and the other two respectively gathered the most approval. The exhibit is at Fairhaven Memorial Park on November 13. Thankfully, it is THURSDAY, November 13 and not Friday… yikes!

The artist collective ?€?Finishing School?€? has taken up a residency at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (L.A. MOCA). What that means is that MOCA is too ossified and insular to know what the fuck is going on and finally realize that simply asking Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden for new ways to stroke Paul Schimmel?€™s ego by adding their friends, lovers and former students to the permanent collection isn?€™t getting the museum anywhere. If the piece of rat shit that is the Martin Kippenberger retrospective currently on view at their Grand Avenue building is any indicator, old curator Anne Goldstein is even more out of touch with anything that has a pulse in regards to art.

So to happily mix metaphors, the new blood is a breath of fresh air at the cathedral of those old farts. Finishing School?€™s first project was entitled EXECUTIVE ORDER. The piece was to stage a participatory event outside in MOCA?€™s sculpture plaza. They set up a karaoke machine with familiar songs (Like a Virgin, I Will Survive) and had people sign up to sing on stage, where behind them was projected images of George W. Bush. The participants were then to sing along to the familiar tunes, but the ?€?lyrics?€? were word-for-word Executive Orders of the Bush Administration. From topics as diverse as terrorism to Trout preservation, the participants tried to articulate the bureaucratic machinations of power in familiar melodies, to absolutely comical, pointed results. The members of the Finishing School Collective were dressed as referees and happily judged the efforts by the participating gallery-goers.

Art is charged to engage the public, the world is begging for meaningful political art that does not pander, preach or submit to illustrate the whims of a manipulative force. Art that is not fun is inevitably going to be ignored. Finishing School has solved so many problems embedded in contemporary art with one great night out on the town. It was absolutely shocking that MOCA would have such an event, vitality and current-ness being the last thing on the aging pink whale?€™s mind. ON a night with the political debates and a Dodger playoff game, a huge crowd turned out to enjoy art that involved, critiqued, satirized and hit home. It seemed so simple, but it took 22 years of boring MOCA shows to arrive at the point where the light bulb finally went off over someone?€™s head that nobody was buying the bullshit printed on the stupid wall labels rationalizing the egomania and insider status of assholes like Kippenberger as worthy of examination by the art audience.

A museum-goer participates in EXECUTIVE ORDER, the art experience produced at L.A. MOCA by the FINISHING SCHOOL art collective, singing the words of Executive Orders of President Bush to the tunes of popular songs. I think this guy was singing about terrorism to Bon Jovi.

The FINISHING SCHOOL Collective are dressed as referees because they were judging the EXECUTIVE ORDER karaoke contest they organized at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art

The ambience of a beer and karaoke art event sanctioned by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Ed Giardinna and Brian Boyer, co-founders of the FINISHING SCHOOL art collective.